Note:
A considerable number of important amendments were made to this Bill at
the committee stage. For the original Bill see
the
General Laws Amendment Bill, 2005 gazetted on May 20, 2005.

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Gazetted 20th May,
2005, amended to include changes at August 30, 2005.

NOTE
ON THIS VERSION OF THE BILL

This
document incorporates all the amendments made to the Bill in Parliament,
up to and including those made on the 30th August, 2005, as reflected
in the uncorrected Votes and Proceedings of the House. Committee Stage
amendments were made on the 27th and 28th July, 2005 (shown in red in
this document - see clauses 2, 13, 21, 26, 31 and 33 and Schedule).

The Parliamentary
Legal Committee returned a non-adverse report on the amendments. Subsequently,
on the motion of the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs,
the Bill was "recommitted" (i.e., the Committee Stage was re-opened)
and further amendments were made on the 30th August, 2005 (text shown
in blue - see clauses 7, 11 and 25, below).

Those
further amendments are now (7th September, 2005) under consideration by
the Parliamentary Legal Committee. The original Bill H.B. 5, 2005 contained
28 clauses and a Schedule; after these two sets of amendments, the number
of clauses has risen to 35. As a result of the amendments, clause numbers
in this version, from clause 2 onwards, differ from those in the original
Bill.

Comments
on Committee Stage Amendments

These comments deal
only with the new clauses added to the Bill and the changes made to certain
of the original clauses.

Clause 2 (new
clause)
Amends section 9 of the Statute Law Compilation and Revision Act [Chapter
1:03] to permit the appointment of the Deputy Chairman of the Law Development
Commission to act as Law Reviser.

Clause 7
(new clause)
Amends section 346A of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act [Chapter
9:07] with a view to clarifying the procedure for altering the standard
scale of fines by statutory instrument. A new subsection (4) for that
section makes it clear that the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary
Affairs must obtain Parliamentary approval of a draft before publishing
a statutory instrument altering the standard scale.

The clause is in fact
unnecessary, because clause 11 (see below) will make section 346A a dead
letter by bringing the corresponding provisions of the Criminal Law (Codification
and Reform) Act [Chapter 9:23] (Act No. 23 of 2004) (the "Criminal
Law Code") into immediate operation, ahead of the remainder of that
Act. (Those provisions already contain a provision identical to the new
subsection (4) provided for by this clause.)

Clause 11
(new clause)
This clause is an obvious response to two facts: (1) that the current
standard scale of fines (set out in Statutory Instrument 192 of 2003)
has remained unchanged since the 19th September, 2003, notwithstanding
the massive decline in the value of money in the nearly two years that
have passed since that date; (2) that the pending successor scale (the
new standard scale set out in the First Schedule to the Criminal Law Code)
is already totally inadequate and will be even more inadequate by the
time the Code comes into force in several months' time).

The clause accordingly
makes provision for the early replacement of the standard scale with a
new scale specifying monetary amounts that are substantially higher than
the amounts specified in both the current standard scale and the standard
scale that would otherwise have replaced it in due course (the scale presently
set out in the First Schedule to the Criminal Law Code). It is a rather
complicated provision but its effect is that the new standard scale of
fines set out in subclause (1) will come into force on the date on which
this Bill is published in the Government Gazette as the General Laws Amendment
Act, 2005. Assuming final approval of this Bill shortly after Parliament
resumes sittings on the 11th October, 2005, that could be before the end
of October.

A noteworthy difference
between the new standard scale and the scale presently set out in the
First Schedule to the Criminal Law Code is that in the new scale the maximum
permissible deposit fine will not be limited to half the monetary amount
of level three.

Clause 13
(original clause 10, as altered)
This clause amends section 5 of the Pools Control Act [Chapter 10:19].
In its original form the clause would have allowed not only licence fees,
but also pool betting tax, to be fixed in regulations made by the responsible
Minister instead of, as at present, having to be fixed in the Finance
Act. That would not only have gone beyond the intention stated in the
memorandum, which referred to licence fees only, but would have been wrong
in principle. The Committee Stage amendment restricts the scope of the
clause to licence fees only.

Clause 21
(original clause 18, as altered)
At present, the correct position in law is that the Rural Electrification
Fund Act [Chapter 13:20] (No. 3 of 2002) came into force on the 16th May,
2005, the date fixed for its commencement in Statutory Instrument 67A
of 2005, made in terms of section 1(2) of the Act. The purpose of the
clause is to backdate the commencement of the Act to the date on which
it was originally published in the Government Gazette, which was the 22nd
March, 2002. The effect of the Committee Stage amendment is merely to
state that date specifically, which is more helpful for the reader.

Clause 25
(new clause)
This clause merely removes three confusing words from section 19(1) of
the recently enacted Health Service Act [Chapter 15:16] (No. 28 of 2004);
section 19 provides for the establishment of hospital management boards
by the Minister of Health.

Clause 26
(new clause)
A significant clause envisaging a major change in the law. It replaces
section 10 of the Acquisition of Farm Equipment and Material Act [Chapter
18:23] (No. 7 of 2004) with a new section. The effect of the new section
can be appreciated by comparing it with the existing section. The existing
section provides as follows—

10 Use
of acquired farm equipment or material
Any farm equipment or material acquired in terms of this Act shall vest
in the State for the benefit of the Land Reform Programme and shall
not be sold or otherwise disposed of to any private individual, institution
or corporation.

The new section would
abolish that prohibition on sale or disposition of acquired equipment
or material and substitute an express provision for the State to sell
or otherwise dispose of such equipment or material "for valuable
consideration" to "any private individual, institution or corporation
requiring to use the equipment or material for agricultural purposes on
agricultural land".

Clause 31
(new clause)
This new clause amends various provisions of the Banking Act [Chapter
24:20] (No. 9 of 1999). The amendments do not touch on matters of substance;
they merely tidy up outdated references (such as references to the former
Post Office Savings Bank) or infelicities of language.

paragraph (a),
amending section 7(1) of the Act, appears to be designed to place further
limitations on the employment in Zimbabwe of lawyers resident outside
Zimbabwe

paragraph (b) allows
registered legal practitioners in the full-time employment of the Zimbabwe
Revenue Authority to perform legal services for the Authority without
having to hold a practising certificate (thereby extending to them the
same exemption already enjoyed by registered legal practitioners in
the full-time employment of the State)

replaces section
82 of the Act, which presently deals only with the right of State employees
to appear in court on behalf of the State, with a wider provision permitting
the appearance in court, on behalf of their employer, of both State
employees and employees of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority. The new element
is in subsection (2) of the new section; subsection (1) merely repeats
the existing provision for State employees.

Schedule
The amendment to the heading of the Schedule is a tidying-up measure of
no significance.